Production notes

The film was the featured opening night selection at the 46th New York Film Festival in 2008. The film has received critical acclaim, achieving a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes out of 161 reviews counted, and an average rating of 8.1/10. The site's consensus reads, "Energetic and bright, this hybrid of documentary style and dramatic plotting looks at the present and future of France through the interactions of a teacher and his students in an inner-city high school." Metacritic lists Entre les murs with a rating of 92, based on 31 critics, making it one of the best reviewed films of the year according to the website. The film was warmly reviewed by the critic Philip French who noted: "There is a remarkable French tradition of school films, extending from Jean Vigo's Zéro de Conduite, to Nicolas Philibert's Être et avoir. Laurent Cantet, whose parents were both teachers, carries it on and he elicits marvellous performances... As the teacher at a tough, racially mixed, inner-city school in Paris, Marin (François Bégaudeau), neither weary cynic nor wide-eyed idealist, is a decent, determined realist... not a saint, though by the end of the school year he has exhibited some of the necessary qualities." The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. French researcher and education writer Philippe Meirieu observed that the film shows a teacher full of leftist good intentions, who nonetheless neglects any form of mediation and who does not use any pedagogy beyond a kind of dialogical lecture, without any structured learning situation. The teacher comes to rely on charm, pressure and sanction, while failing to avoid personal confrontation with some of his students. Meirieu is concerned about the reading that can be made of the film, which, by showing classroom difficulties and the explosive situation that emerges, risks suggesting that there is no alternative to an authoritarian approach. In 2024, Looper ranked it number 14 on its list of the "50 Best PG-13 Movies of All Time," writing "What could have been one-note schmaltz ended up being one of the best-reviewed foreign-language titles of 2008, thanks to the film's dedication to rendering its lead character as a complicated and flawed human while also delivering optimally-conceived feel-good moments."